She flicked a glance at me, the eerie light green of her eyes even more so with the sunlight streaming through the window over the sink. But her gaze moved on, roaming the room as if searching for something. Or someone. Perhaps— Henry.
She stared at the bathroom door, and that shiver I’d had before returned. Was there someone else in my apartment besides the insane masked man or woman?
“Who’s Henry?”
The wolf’s eyes returned to me.
“For that matter, who are you?”
Prudence.
My wolf was named Prudence. Hadn’t seen that coming.
You can call me Pru if you like.
“Sure, why not? And Henry? Who’s he? Where is he?”
Her gaze went to the bathroom again.
“In there?”
No. He is next to the bookcase.
“The only thing next to the bookcase is more books.” I needed a bigger bookcase, but who didn’t?
You can’t see him.
It didn’t sound like a question, but I answered anyway. “No. Should I?”
Her blue-black fur rippled, a lupine shrug. Probably not.
“Why not?”
He’s a ghost.
Chapter 9
“Sir.” Owen moved back.
Becca’s father stepped into the cabin.
“Bly’b,” Owen said, and shut the door.
The man cast him a confused glance. “Excuse me?”
That had sounded like gibberish.
“The dog.” Owen waved at the bed. “I told him to stay in German. It’s how he was trained, the commands that he knows.”
Dale Carstairs grunted. Owen hoped he had more to say than that. Then again, maybe he didn’t. The last time they’d spoken this man had ordered Owen to leave his darling daughter alone.
“You need to leave Becca alone.”
“Wow,” Owen said. “Déjà vu.”
“Don’t be a smartass.”
Owen moved into the kitchen to make coffee, more for something to do than for actual drinking. He was jittery enough just being in Three Harbors without adding caffeine. But Becca’s dad had revived all the uncertainty he’d always felt in the man’s presence.
Even before Owen had banged his daughter.
Owen tried to cover the flinch and his continued unease with a search for the coffee. There wasn’t any. Why would there be? He hadn’t been shopping.
“Listen, I…” Owen scrubbed his hands through his hair, turned.
Carstairs stared at Owen’s leg. Hell. He’d gimped across the room without even trying to hide it. Not that he’d have been able to keep hiding it for much longer, but he’d rather not have revealed his weakness to this man first.
“What happened?” While Carstairs’s gaze had been hostile when he’d walked in, along with his voice, both had softened. Pity did that.
“World went boom,” Owen said shortly. “I was in the way.”
“Sorry to hear it. I was also sorry to hear about the trouble at your place.”
I bet you were, Owen thought. If it weren’t for the trouble at his place Owen might already be on a plane.
“I should have kept an eye on the house.”
“That wasn’t your job.”
“I’m the closest neighbor. I’d say it is.”
“I doubt anything would have helped. You couldn’t be there twenty-four/seven.”
Owen had learned during his first week in Afghanistan that a determined kook was never deterred. Considering his mother, he’d probably learned that his first week on earth.
“Still, I’m sorry you came home to such a horrible sight.”
“I’ve seen worse.”
“I’m sorry about that too.”
Carstairs was sorry about a lot. For an instant Owen wondered if he was sorry he’d done what he had all those years ago. Then Owen remembered the first words the guy had uttered today.
You need to leave Becca alone.
Which were nearly the same as the last words Owen had heard him say. Nevertheless …
“Wasn’t your fault.”
“Seems I was the one who encouraged you to join up.”
“Encouraged? Is that what they’re calling it now?”
The way Owen remembered it, he’d been “encouraged” to enlist or be charged with statutory rape. By the time he’d discovered that the statutory rape law in Wisconsin defined adult as eighteen and the age of consent as less than fifteen, and therefore did not apply to him and Becca, it was too late. He was in the Marines.
“What did you expect me to do?” Carstairs looked away. “I took you in; I gave you a home; I treated you like you were my own son. Then I caught you having sex with my seventeen-year-old daughter.”
“I loved her.”
“You would have ruined her.”
According to this man, he had ruined her.
In the end, Owen hadn’t enlisted because of the threat itself, but because the issuance of it had illustrated the truth. Owen would never be accepted in this town. He would always be seen as “less than.”
Carstairs rubbed his palms along the hips of his stained overhauls. It didn’t appear as if he’d changed after coming in from morning milking. He’d no doubt run right over here the instant he’d heard that Owen was back.